Her Father's Daughter
by GrlNamedLucifer
Summary: If Kimiko was the sort who needed the approval of others, Father would have disillusioned her of that long ago. Spoilers for 2x01.


**Title:** Her Father's Daughter  
**Fandom:** Heroes  
**Rating:** PG/K+  
**Spoilers:** S2 finale and implied 2x01 ones. Also, takes issues #47 & #48 (Heroism is Found in the Heart) of the online comic as canon.  
**Warning:** None, unbeta-ed  
**Characters/Pairing:** Kimiko, Kaito, Hiro, Ando (Kimiko/Fumio, Kimiko/Ando)  
**Disclaimer:** All NBC's and none of mine. I make no money from this. Also, please remember that fiction is fictional.  
**Summary:** _If Kimiko was the sort who needed the approval of others, Father would have disillusioned her of that long ago._  
**A/N:** An attempt to mesh the reserved (minus the occasional angry outburst) characterization of the show with the ass-kicking Ando-kissing version in the comics. Will likely make more sense if you have read said comic.

-----

Nakamura Kaito would never be called the most demonstrative of fathers, a fact which suits Kimiko perfectly well. It does not mean that they love each other any less, more that her little brother is affectionate enough for the three of them. The fact that Father gives what little attention, if not affection, he has to Hiro does not bother her when she thinks it through rationally. Her brother is Father's heir and therefore deserves more attention. If it causes her to become jealous then it is a fault of her own poorly controlled emotions, not his.

Kimiko comes to this conclusion as a little girl, when an upperclassman girl decides that the quiet rich girl who spends her free time doing homework because she enjoys it makes for an easy target. Kimiko does not even look up when the girl teases her lack of friends to spend time with or when she snatches the book from her hands and tosses it away. She bites her tongue when the girl starts mocking Hiro, whom everyone knows is barely keeping from failing out of his classes.

But when the girl insults Father, for the first time she can remember Kimiko fails to think before she acts. At the end of the day, the girl is sent home with a bruise and Kimiko with a letter from her teacher and a feeling of dread as she waits for Father to come home.

The momentary thrill of Father's attention is quickly ended at the look on his face. Until now, she had thought that that look could only be given to her little brother and she does not understand how Hiro can face it so often, why he does not work harder to avoid it.

It is then she decides that Father's attention is not worth the price of Father's disappointment, and resolves to receive neither ever again.

-----

Despite the warning that the sound of pounding feet running down the hall gives her, Kimiko cannot move her homework fast enough before her little brother launches himself onto her bed, sending her papers flying.

"Father is taking me to New York! Father is taking me to New York!" Hiro shouts, bouncing giddily as he tells her what Father had already informed her of the day before. "Do you think I'll see Spiderman there?"

"Hiro!" Kimiko admonishes, pulling her papers away before his bouncing scatters them more. "Father is bringing you to pay attention. To show you how to run a business. Not for you to pretend that you are in one of your comic books."

Hiro pouts at her, finally stopping his bouncing. "If it is business, then you should go, big sister. You're the one who is good at that."

"Which is why Father is taking you and not me, little brother. To learn." Wanting to get rid of the ridiculous pout on her brother's face, she adds, "Maybe Father will take you to Time Square when he has finished. And you can buy me a souvenir and it will be just like I came with you."

It does the trick, and a few weeks later Hiro returns from New York with a haphazardly wrapped package. He presents it to her as grandly as if it had the sword of Kensei himself in it and not simply an overly large t-shirt with an obnoxious 'I love New York' printed on it. She tells him that she adores it and his smile is brighter than the sun as he begins to tell her all of what he and Father did in America.

When he distractedly asks her why Father would be carrying a baby, she does not have an answer for him, and the lack of such worries her more than Hiro, who continues with his babblings without noticing her distraction. She silently adds it to her mental list of the things she does not know about Father, right below the question of why he would need to discuss in New York a paper company in Texas, or why he owns such a thing to begin with, and hopes that he will one day trust her enough to let her know the answers.

-----

The first time she meets Fukazawa Fumio, it is when he only just avoids running her over with his motorcycle. It is an ominous beginning to what she knows will be a short relationship, but he apologizes like a gentleman and is kind to her and she lets herself be charmed by him.

The girls at school that she calls friends laugh and claim that dating him is her rebelling against Father and she knows herself well enough to acknowledge that it may be true. She tells him nothing, though. Of Fumio, of their relationship, of him teaching her to ride (amongst other things she certainly will never mention to Father). She does not pretend that this means he does not know (for Father knows everything, she has found) but, if he does, he either allows it or is once again too distracted by his disappointment in Hiro to notice.

It does not matter, either way. Fumio is an entertaining distraction, but one she has no time for once she begins to work at Yamagato. A decision Fumio is less than thrilled about, and she finds that he proves to be less kind than she had thought, but she promised him nothing and has given exactly that.

It earns her a reputation for being cold-hearted and a 'time waster,' and her friends mourn her apparent return to status quo. But if Kimiko was the sort who needed the approval of others, Father would have disillusioned her of that long ago.

-----

The first time she meets Masahashi Ando, Kimiko decides she wants nothing at all to do with him.

It is not the obvious crush he has on her that makes this decision, nor the presumptuous way he behaves around her, as if his mere presence should make her fall for him. She is used to such behavior from men and boys, most of whom foolishly see her as a path to get into Father's good graces.

In fact, her decision has little to do with her at all and everything to do with her little brother. Hiro has clearly decided that this boy is his new best friend. But, with experience and eyes unclouded by such things, Kimiko can tell that the boy does not feel the same. Her little brother babbles about his comics and Star Trek and action figures and his 'friend' nods and smiles with the same annoyed, tolerant expression that she has seen time after time on Father's face.

She is not at all surprised when she sees his name on a Yamagato application a few days later. She wishes nothing more than to dismiss it, to protect her little brother from learning what 'friends' mean to a Nakamura. But while she may disagree with much in Father's treatment of Hiro, he is correct in his belief that his children will not succeed in life if they do not learn such things for themselves. So she can do nothing else but to mark the paper with her approval, and then watch and hope that she is wrong.

But if Kimiko has learned anything at all in this life, it is that she is very rarely wrong.

-----

"Do you know how foolish I looked today when I told your supervisor that of course my brother was not on vacation in America for I think I would know such things?"

Kimiko is livid enough to do nothing to hide the anger in her voice when Hiro finally answers his phone. There is nothing in the world that she despises more than being made to look foolish, a fact her little brother knows full well.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" She gets the ridiculous image in her head of him bowing to the phone, made worse by the fact that she knows her brother well enough that it is probably what he is doing at the moment. "But it was an emergency!"

"In America?" Kimiko sighs as he starts babbling something about Las Vegas and a comic and the space/time continuum and rubs her temple with her fingers. She loves her little brother dearly, but even she cannot deny the fact that they are as alike as fire and water. Already knowing what the answer will be, she interrupts him. "You of course told Father of this plan, yes?"

"Um... I was hoping that maybe...you could?"

"Hiro!"

"He wouldn't understand it coming from me! You are the one he listens to!"

"Because I listen to him, and not just when he is telling stories!" For the thousandth time, Kimiko questions Father's decision to read Hiro the stories of Kensei. Clearly they have made him decide that taking off to other countries on a comic book's say so is something that adults in the real world do.

"Please, big sister? The fate of the world depends on it!"

Kimiko forces down a smile, resolved not to let her little brother bring her into this flight of fancy. But he is still her little brother. "I cannot promise anything, but-"

"I love you, big sister!" He interrupts and she will deny to the death the laugh that she cannot contain. "Thank you! Thank you!"

"I love you too, little brother. Even if I think you are completely insane."

-----

In the end her promise is useless, for when she goes to tell Father, he already knows. She is not surprised by this and refuses to admit to herself that she is grateful for it. Kimiko knows that business is not faring well and, while she attempts to stop the gossip of Father's inability to control her brother from reaching his ears, she knows that she cannot shield him from all of it and does not wish to be the one responsible for adding more. So she bows and does not question how Father knows where Hiro will be, nor his decision to take her with him when he goes to retrieve him.

Kimiko stays silent, even while knowing Father's rantings will do nothing to dissuade Hiro of this make-believe quest of his. She stamps down the thrill of anger that rushes through her when Father tells him he will be made Executive Vice President, for she has always known and accepted Father's plans. That she should be jealous of them now is irrational, even if she had always expected it to happen when Hiro had finally accepted his responsibility and not when he was clearly not ready.

Instead, she asks Father for a chance to reason with him, which he grants, she assumes, because he knows that Hiro listens to her. She offers her brother a chance to be a hero, a real life one and not one from some fantasy quest, the hero she has accepted that it is not her place to be.

And for a moment, she almost believes that he agrees. That he has finally become the man Father has wanted him to become and she hoped he could be. She is even mildly grateful to his friend's encouragement. (And if his overheard compliment that she is the smart one startles her, she does not show it.) She is not lying when she says that his agreement is good news, even if it puts a finality on her own advancement.

But the things that he suggests stun Kimiko. She knows such things will do nothing to help Yamagato, will in fact ruin all of the careful planning and hard work she and Father have done for years. She tries to politely dissuade him, to suggest to him the ideas that she has been debating and working over for so long that she knows cannot fail.

But when he dares to mock her knowledge, she cannot contain herself. For what must only be the second time in her life, Kimiko speaks without thinking, tells Hiro exactly what she thinks of this foolishness, of what she did not even allow herself to want until this moment. She does not even remember Father is there until he says her name, the expression on his face one that she has never seen.

It is as if he has never seen her before and when Hiro stops her attempt to apologize, it is only then that she has realized what her brother has done. That he has become the man they always thought he could be, if not on the path that Father has chosen, and she thinks she has never loved him more or been prouder of him.

Perhaps they can both be heroes after all.

-----

It is a week since Father returned from America, without Hiro. She wants to ask what happened to her brother, but if Father wished her to know he would have told her by now. Since he has not, she knows that questions will get her nowhere. Some of her employees claim to have seen him and his friend at Yamagato sometime before Father returned, but she dismisses them as rumors. If Hiro had returned, Father would not wander the house like he had lost something. Like he was waiting for something, for someone.

She finds herself in her brother's room, with little remembrance of deciding to go there. It is untouched from when he left for America and Kimiko picks up the comics thrown haphazardly across the floor, returning them to their proper place. She is confused when she finds one with the cover torn off for, before his foray into saving the world, her little brother treated nothing with more care than his comics.

She is sitting on her brother's bed, still staring at the comic, when she finally realizes she is no longer alone in the room. Father has come in at some point and now sits next to her, staring at the wall ahead of him as blankly as she had the comic.

He does not speak and she does the same, but as they sit there in her little brother's room, she finds her hand holding Father's without knowing which moved to do so. And if either notice the other clutching painfully to their own, they both have more than enough practice at not saying anything of it.

-----

It is not unusual for Kimiko to be the last one to leave work for the night, even before Father made her Executive Vice President, but tonight it is even later than usual. After the others left the board meeting, Father had kept her back to discuss an important matter, and by the time she is leaving the building, it is long passed dark and has begun to rain.

She spends a moment silently berating herself for forgetting her umbrella before realizing the rain is no longer soaking her. Letting herself smile, for she knows him well enough now to know he has been standing there waiting for this moment to 'rescue' her, she turns to see Ando holding his umbrella over them both. "My hero," she says, and the hesitant smile, so unlike the brazen one in New York when he had attempted to hug her, turns into one that rivals her brother's in brightness.

She allows him to walk her home and as he does he tells her stories of his adventures with Hiro in America. She does not believe half of them to be true, but finds herself growing charmed where she would have once merely tolerated. She cannot determine where this change in him has come, whether it is from her brother's influence or his new responsibility in working for Father, but suspects it to be both and decides she very much approves.

"Kimiko-chan," Ando starts when they have almost reached her home, suddenly serious. "Your father and I-"

"Are returning to America tomorrow," she finishes for him. "That is what Father wished to speak to me about."

"Yes," he nods. "Your father thinks it would be best to wait for Hiro to return there, where he disappeared, and not here."

She can tell by his face (and if he wished to last long with Father he needed to learn not to show so much) that that is not all he wanted to say. So she waits patiently, until she realizes he is not going to continue. "And?"

"Ah! Well, I was just wondering... You... could come with us?"

"No," she says, not letting his crestfallen expression affect her. "I am not Hiro. I cannot be in two places at once. I must stay where I am most needed. Where I can help to save my family."

Ando nods in understanding and starts to walk again, but she stops him with her hand on his arm. He turns and looks at her curiously. "Promise me, though," she says, and pretends that she cannot hear the desperation hidden in her voice. "Promise me you will bring them back to me."

"I promise."

Kimiko allows herself to smile again, touching his cheek with her hand, his lips with her own, grateful that he has allowed her this momentary lie.

She is smart enough not to believe him.


End file.
